Container treatment installations comprise guide elements that are arranged to guide the containers through the installation. In most cases, the guide units will guide the containers through the installation from one processing station to the next. For example, a guide unit might guide a container from a filling station to a labeling station. These guide units are generally customized to the container being guided. In particular, the guide unit accommodates such container characteristics as container shape, weight, and/or size.
Since a container-treatment installation would be expected to handle different containers, the container guide must be arranged to match the different container sizes, the most significant being container height and the container diameter. For example, the ideal contact point between a container guide and a short bottle is perceptibly lower than the corresponding ideal contact point on a tall bottle. One way to achieve this is to have interchangeable parts.
Storing different parts for different containers is burdensome because one must acquire and store so many different parts. In addition, the labor associated with exchanging parts is time-consuming. This results in machine down-time and lost production.